"YOU HAVE COME FROM GOD, YOU ARE A SPARK OF HIS GLORY. YOU WILL GET PEACE ONLY WHEN YOU AGAIN MERGE IN HIM."

You take my heart and breathe it back to life.

{one.}

Until we’re perfect or bulletproof, before we walk into the arena, we ultimately sacrifice relationships and opportunities that may not be recoverable, we squander our precious time, and we turn our back on our gifts, those unique contributions that only we can make. Perfect and bulletproof are suductive, but they don’t exist in the human experience. We must walk into the arena, whatever it may be — a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation — with courage and the willingness to engage. Rather than sitting on the sidelines and hurling judgment and advice, we must dare to show up.

{two.}

She was born wild and curious. A cage is no place for someone like that. “I play with the fire of my own truth,” she told me, “I will burn for the things I love.”

{three.}

She brought out the storm in people, because she knew wherever there were dark skies and wild winds, lied a truth – a truth that described how much love one can leave behind the moment they accept all the pain they have lived. And that is all she ever wanted, for everyone around her to embrace their stories and make them falll in love with their own violent winds.

{four.}

Soulmates aren’t the ones who make you happiest, no. They’re instead the ones who make you feel the most. Burning edges and scars and stars. Old pains and pangs, captivation and beauty. Strain and shadows and worrying and yearning. Sweetness and madness and dreamlike surrender. They hurl you into the abyss. They taste like hope.

{five.}

Moments. Our lives are made up of a series of moments. If you’re lucky, youll get to have hundreds, even thousands of them. There will be small moments. Moments when you’re doing something so mundane, you won’t realize you’re in a moment. There will also be big moments. Life changing ones. These ones will be in your memory for an awfully long time. Keep them all safe. This is a moment.

{six.}

I can see it. This one moment when you know you’re not a sad story. You are alive, and you stand up and see the lights on the buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And you’re listening to that song on that drive with the people you love most in this world. And in this moment, I swear, we are infinite.

{seven.}

And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through or how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the strom is really over. But one thing is certain: when you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in.

{eight.}

She was never crazy. She just didn’t let her heart settle in a cage. She was born wild, and sometimes, we need people like her. For it’s the horrors in her heart which cause the flames in ours. And she was always willing to burn for everything she ever loved.

{nine.}

You do not get to choose the events that come your way nor the sorrows that interrupt your life. They will likely be a surprise to you, catching you off guard and unprepared. You may hold your head in your hands and lament in your weak condition and wonder what you ought to do. To suffer, that is common to all. To suffer and still keep your compusure, your faith, and your smile, that is remarkable. Pain will change you more profoundly than success or good fortune. Suffering shapes your perception of life, your values and priorities, and your goals and dreams. Your pain is changing you.

{ten.}

The older you get, the more you realize that it isn’t about the material things, or pride, or ego. It’s about our hearts and who they beat for.

{eleven.}

I used to think that when people fell in love, they just landed where they landed, and they had no choice in the matter afterward. And maybe that’s true of beginnings, but it’s not true of this, now.

{twelve.}

Sometimes, contentment is a matter of will. You have to look at what you have right in front of you, at what it could be, and stop measuring it against what you’ve lost. I know this to be wise and true, just as I know that pretty much no one can do it.

{thirteen.}

Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.

{fourteen.}

Sometimes, I think about al that I’ve done and gone through that no one even knows about and I get sad thinking that no one will ever know about all these things that make me, me, but then I think maybe it’s best that these things die with me. Maybe, that’s not such a bad thing.

{fifteen.}

The fact that our hearts yearn for something Earth can’t supply is proof that Heaven must be our home.

{sixteen.}

The devil doesn’t come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you’ve ever wished for.

{seventeen.}

During a storm, hope gives us the ability to look at things as they are and still be confident that something better is coming.

{eighteen.}

There’s always another level up. There’s always another ascension. More grace, more light, more generosity, more compassion, more to grow.

{nineteen.}

I’ve lived. I’ve really, really lived. I’ve failed. I’ve been devastated. I’ve been broken. I’ve gone to hell and back. And I’ve also known joy. And passion. and I’ve had a great love. See, death for me, is not justice. It’s an end of a beautiful journey.

{twenty.}

Dear human:

You’ve got it all wrong. You didn’t come here to master unconditional love. That is where you came from and where you’ll return. You came here to learn personal love. Universal love. Messy love. Sweaty love. Crazy love. Broken love. Whole love. Infused with divinity. Lived through the grace of stumbling. Demonstrated through the beauty of messing up. Often. You didn’t come here to be perfect. You already are. You came here to be gorgeously human. Flawed and fabulous. And then to rise again into remembering. But unconditional love? Stop telling that story. Love, in truth, doesn’t need ANY other adjectives. It doesn’t require modifiers. It doesn’t require the condition of perfection. It only asks that you show up. And do your best. That you stay present and feel fully. That you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt and heal and fall and get back up and play and work and live and die as YOU. It’s enough. It’s plenty.